How Technology Is Changing Legal Practices

The online world is changing faster than any of us could ever imagine. Communication is becoming cheaper every day. All this change is making it easy for employers to fact check and background check their employees, making for a much safer work environment. I've recently had to do this with my company in order to protect us from all the many people out there that could hurt my business.

In the pre-Internet days, a business had to go through a 3rd party to be able to find out information on someone. The process could take months. Now you can on Google and find out a lot of information in a matter of seconds. Facebook is a private network, but if you type site:Facebook.com “John Rampton” into Google, you will be able to see my profile picture, even if I’ve set all my settings to private. My friend Peter always says "nothing is truly private when it’s online.” We joke, but it’s a reality.

The internet is changing all the rules on privacy and private information. This is changing the way that that people practice law.

Kirk Lee from Loncar & Associates represents more than 7000+ clients. When I asked him about technology, he said, “the Internet is crucial to our business and growth. Now, with the flip of a button, you have 1000 articles about whatever topic your searching for. You can now find information about people you’re searching for. It’s easy to get ahold of people. The Internet is chaining how we practice law.”

Technology is changing the way we communicate online. The access to information has never been this great. Businesses can get information on potential employees. They can know the entire history of their potential employee before they even meet them. For example, I was able to change start Due.com for pennies compared to my previous business.

I asked Bahram Seyed-Noor, a lawyer I’ve worked with for years, what change has really impacted his business the most. He says, "the biggest impact has been on my ability to practice efficiently. When I started in 1999, secretaries scheduled meetings, sent faxes, copied and collated documents for court filings, and compiled voluminous paper files for our cases. Now, I have software that allows clients to schedule meetings with me during available times with minimal effort. I send letters and file briefs electronically in seconds, and keep paperless files in the cloud that my clients and I can instantly access. Within a decade, technology literally displaced administrative assistants, file cabinets, fax machines and couriers for many tasks that are essential to the practice of law.”

New technology will make it easier for lawyers to gain information on their cases. This is helping lawyers scale their businesses and solve cases faster and in a much more economical way.